Frequently Defeated

This story, which I wrote for Bethany Hunter's Game Over...Continue? Contest, contains a little mild bondage and humiliation. Reader discretion is advised.

BOSH! ZONK! KRUNK!

Nocturne smiled with satisfaction as the three thugs dropped unconscious to the floor. They were so alike that they could have been identical triplets, and each was dressed and equipped in exactly the same way: black leather jacket, white T-shirt, blue jeans, and a baseball bat with precisely three nails sticking out of it.

It was all rather surreal, but she was pleased that her martial arts were able to solve the problems of this strange town just as effectively as when she was back home. She had landed a neat punch right in the face of the first thug, then followed up with a gravity-defying spinning kick that took out the other two as they closed in from either side. She wasn't even out of breath, continuing to bob up and down lightly in her combat stance exactly as she had before the thugs appeared from the edges of the... she wanted to say

screen

, but wasn't sure why.

Home. Where was that again? Her memory was misty, as if part of it had been removed.

PLINK!

The vanquished thugs, defying all logic and reason, vanished from the dirty ground where they had lain. In their place were two grotesquely oversized gold coins, balanced on their edges, and what looked like a whole roast chicken. Whatever was going on?

Continuing to bob up and down, Nocturne walked forward, compelled by some mysterious urge to travel... from left to right. Wait, what did that mean? Why was she thinking about the world in two dimensions? And why she was walking on to the coins?

PLINK! PLINK!

The coins, like the thugs, vanished as she stepped on them. But surely she wasn't going to...

PLINK!

The chicken vanished too. And, oddly, the slight aches and pains she had picked up while battling the bad guys vanished with it. In fact, she felt superb!

"Hey, Nocturne! Up here!"

She looked up, alarmed, and saw a tiny airship floating ahead of her. Poking his head out of the cockpit was a small bald man with the letters "GM" glowing on his forehead. She did not recognise the man, but felt compelled to fight him.

"You're going to jail, GamesMaster!"

Nocturne didn't exactly

say

this, but she was aware that the words were somehow communicated - as if someone had written them above her head. She had no idea where the name "GamesMaster" had come from.

"Come and get me, super-bimbo!"

Nocturne leapt forward impetuously, her body rearranging itself as she soared into a classic flying kick. But she had hopelessly misjudged the distance to the airship, and plunged downwards into the indistinct void below.

"Ha ha ha!" cackled the bald man, as Nocturne was swallowed up by the darkness, and her consciousness faded.

GAME OVER!

Nocturne awoke to a flashing red light and an odd sensation of failure. She remembered a mysterious compulsion to leap, and then a dreadful fall. But what had happened next?

She looked down, and saw that her costume had been stripped from her. Her dark zippered bodysuit was gone, as were her cape and fishnet stockings; these had been replaced with lacy white lingerie like something from a 1990s men's magazine. For that matter, she was no longer wearing her visor, and felt especially vulnerable without its high-tech capabilities.

Enraged by this violation, Nocturne tried to leap to her feet, but found to her horror that whoever had changed her clothes and stolen her visor had also bound her very tightly and securely with an enormous quantity of slim red rope. Her wrists and elbows were tied behind her back; her legs were firmly lashed together at ankle, knee and thigh; and there was a complicated harness of rope around her chest and shoulders. She felt like she was on display... as if there was some kind of camera trained on her feeble and useless struggles.

"Nnmn nph!"

Even worse! She had been gagged, too. A red bandana with white spots had been forced between her lips and knotted securely behind her head. Stripped, bound and gagged, like some sort of helpless damsel in distress. How humiliating!

"Mmhnph phhm hmmm?"

GAME OVER!

The red light, Nocturne now saw, was coming from two giant words, seemingly floating in mid air above her head. They were written in mirror-image capitals, but her keen analytical mind found it easy to reverse the writing and decipher the message.

GAME OVER.

But what did that mean?

CONTINUE? 10

This was new. What did that mean, continue? Continue where? And how was she supposed to continue anywhere, when she was trussed up and completely helpless? Nocturne squirmed and wriggled in her bonds, trying vainly to escape, but there was no way she was getting free. She realised with some unease that her struggles were following a strangely predictable pattern: squirm to the left, squirm to the right, throw back her head in frustration, mmmmppph! through her gag, then repeat the whole routine

exactly

. And she was quite unable to resist the pull of this mysterious choreography. She knew the ropes were inescapably tight, but felt compelled to struggle against them anyway.

CONTINUE? 9

Nocturne noticed that the number was ticking down. What would happen when it hit zero? Was that when she would be allowed to "continue"? She had an ominous feeling.

CONTINUE? 7

The giant letters were very distracting. But when she looked down, Nocturne noticed that there was a cluster of dark cylinders a few feet away from her bound body. And it had wires sticking out of it. And seemed to be ticking.

Uh oh.

CONTINUE? 5

Was it her imagination, or had the room got colder? Nocturne looked down, and was alarmed to notice that her bra had disappeared, and her breasts were on show to the... 'camera'. When did that happen? Was it connected to the numbers? She squirmed to the left, squirmed to the right, threw back her head in frustration, and mmmmppphed through her gag.

CONTINUE? 3

The ticking seemed to be speeding up. And if Nocturne wasn't mistaken, her struggling against the tight bondage was speeding up at the same rate.

CONTINUE? 2

The worst part was not knowing what was going to happen. And the second worst part was having to sit there helplessly and wait for rescue. It was all very demeaning.

CONTINUE? 1

Nocturne closed her eyes and waited for the end. And then -

Darkness...

A kind of out-of-body experience...

She was floating...

A light, shimmering ahead...

NEW PLAYER!

Nocturne blinked, shook her head, and looked about her. No ropes. No gag. No bomb. And her clothes were back where they belonged!

Thank goodness.

As before, she felt the compulsion to move forward, and did so. As before, the bodybuilder triplets rushed at her from either side, and she was able to defeat them with a few simple attacks. And as before, their limp bodies vanished shortly after hitting the ground, to be replaced by what she could only think of as 'collectibles'.

PLINK! PLINK! PLINK!

"Hey, Nocturne! Up here!"

The airship. The bald man. Déjà vu.

"You're going to jail, GamesMaster!"

"Come and get me, super-bimbo!"

As she prepared for battle, Nocturne became aware, out of the corner of her eye, of a teenage boy in the middle distance. He was facing towards her and staring at her intently... and had to be truly gigantic. There was some sort of computer gizmo in his hands, and when he pressed one of the buttons -

She was off! Hurtling towards the enemy, preparing to leap -

And as she approached the gap, Nocturne realised, just absolutely positively

knew

, that she was going to miss the jump again. The teenager was going to make her jump too early. He

wanted

her to fail.

"That's right, super-dummy! You're stuck in the game with me! Enjoy your endless defeats!"

Nocturne leapt forward impetuously, her body rearranging itself as she soared into a classic flying kick. But she had hopelessly misjudged the distance to the airship, and plunged downwards into the indistinct void below.

"Ha ha ha!" cackled the bald man, as Nocturne was swallowed up by the darkness, and her consciousness faded.

FIN